I Served the King of England

This film had such a muddled and confused beginning which I thought it was going to be bad. however, the last hour was great and gave a real insight into the country at that time

I approached this film not knowing what to expect but I really enjoyed it. The hero (anti-hero?) slips through the traumatic years of recent Czech history in a kind of self-absorbed daze which lands him repeatedly on the wrong side. There are some supremely funny touches - the balletic waiters, the Emperor of Ethiopia's banquet, the multi-lingual maitre d'. And some moving ones - the same maitre d' refusing to speak German to a swaggering customer, his dignified departure when the Gestapo come for him, the glimpse of the concentration camp-bound train. And the final irony when the hero ends up in the abandoned Sudeten village from which the German population had been driven at the end of the war. The acting is excellent throughout, especially the hero, young and old version. The whole story is told with a wry wit concealing serious undercurrents.

I saw Jiri Menzel's masterpiece 'Closely observed trains' decades ago, in my undergraduate days. There wasn't much about trains in it. In Menzel's latest (and frankly less distinguished) outing, he's up to the same trick: there's almost nothing about the King of England in it!

We meet the hero of the story, a diminutive Czech called Dite, as he is being released from a 15-year prison sentence; only at the end of the film do we find out why he was there. The film then alternates between scenes from Dite's life as a young man -- when he was a money-obsessed womaniser -- and his post-prison life, when he is living almost as a hermit, but still has an eye for the ladies.

The early scenes are played for humour and owe something to the style of Jacques Tati -- no bad thing. Later, however, the mood darkens, and we realise that the story is taking place against the background of the rise of the Nazis in neighbouring Germany, and their hostile designs on Czech territory. Dite's serial womanising sees him marrying a Nazi, which makes him a pariah among his fellow Czechs, but also brings him some ill-gotten gains that give him a brief spell of prosperity in the post-war years. Then the communists arrive....

It's an odd little film, but funny enough and touching enough to be worth watching. And, in case this is the sort of thing that's important to you, almost all of the pretty women in the film get their kit off at some stage.

one of those quirky films you'll love or hate. I was indifferent to this one. It was pleasant enough, the charactors developed along nicely, but the plot was someone embellished.

This film was a little too quirky for its own good. It was difficult to sympathise with the main character.